


Another Circular Loom

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Knives, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Siblings, Spiritual Death, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 17:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The serpent eats its own tail.</p>
<p>Or, five times Loki did something differently and one time Thor did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Circular Loom

**i.** _he came in through the front door_

He is tall and strong, a sculpture carved of marble and with angles sharp as glass.

"I am Loki Odinson," the man says. "I have come for my brother."

"This is a restricted area," the man at the gate says, all that training to keep his face passive, voice level.

The man does not smile, does not alter his gaze, but there is a shift, and it is less glass and more steel. "It would be a folly," he says, and his eyes turn colors, a spectrum of impossible hues, "to make me wait."

A beat, a breath not taken, and the man is leaning into his com, lips forming the phrase: danger at the gate. They are his last words, an impossibly sharp knife carving open his throat.

 

**ii.** _he stopped to think_

"The woman."

Thor, mortal flesh but still Thor, looks back. A shower of sparks overhead, and Loki waves it away before it can singe Thor's delicate skin. They give light briefly in the smoky dark to the strange lines by Thor's lips.

"What do you want to do with the woman?"

"I'll come back for her," Thor says, determined, bullheaded, unchanged.

Loki smiles.

 

**iii.** _he laid waste to Asgard_

The apple fields are the first to burn. It smells like a summer bake, except there are no songs, although the screams make for a strange symphony. He burns the wheat, the corn, and the grazing pastures before Odin is there, impossibly, insanely, but there.

"Loki, no -"

"I am not your son," he thinks as he falls, stars in his eyes. "I never have been."

 

**iv.** _he had that drink_

Glass. Alcohol. Distant burn. Brown, blown-pupiled eyes.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

Windows. Wide-open space. Alien landscape. You can't see the stars in the city. The lights block them. It isn't even night.

"I have an army."

But he still lacks conviction.

 

**v.** _he ran_

He knew he wouldn't get far. Drained. Seidr eats from the caster, and he has not eaten since -

He does not want to eat. The drink was a mistake. Sloppy. Everything is so -

Far away but ever closer, they're gaining on him. Not enough energy left to open a path between, not enough even for an effective glamour: he's completely -

"Damn -"

Blood splatters. The leg wound flares bright enough to put his vision out. Where is he bleeding? Not sure: too many origins of pain. Need to stop the bleeding. His blood hasn't been coagulating properly, too much seidr, too little energy, but the liquor thinned his blood. It'll take more effort, more than he can spare. Damn it, damn it all -

"Brother-"

He's falling all over again, but it's only darkness in his eyes.

 

**i.** _he listened_

"You wanted to be my equal."

The injuries have healed, but his brother is still unwell. Thor can see it in the shadows in his eyes, the hollows in his cheeks and bones of his exposed wrists. He cannot see inside of his brother's head, never could. He only has what he can see, what is offered willingly or not.

"I wanted many things," and it's all knife edges and broken glass.

"But you didn't want the throne," Thor says, and he steps forward, towards the unnatural light that makes shadows out of his brother. "You didn't want to be Jotunn."

"I don't want to be Aesir," Loki snarls, deeper, less glass and more gleaming steel.

"You say you're not my brother, but you didn't claim you never wanted to be."

There are less shadows in his eyes, less sinking in his form. Thor does not know if he has truly caught his brother, does not hope to match him for wit. Thor trained for the battlefield, dreamed to coat himself in war prizes and his enemy's blood. Loki trained for the court, for the battles of mind, in arts that gambled less the body and more the soul.

"I said I would go back for her," Thor says, soft and low and new.

And his brother is watching him still, the shadows lesser than the intensity that is as close to light as his eyes will ever come. The injuries have healed, his brother is still unwell, but Thor has grown.

"When do we start?"


End file.
